Pool 8 Christmas Eve Perch

Once there is something stuck in this head of mine it’s stuck, ain’t no shackin’ it until what’s stuck gets jarred loose. Last week….. perch was on the brain but they didn’t want to play. It has been 4 days since and the whole time the green barbed tigers have been wheeling through this skull. Not wanting to give up on the quarry, Thursday 12/24/09 it was time to make another stance against these tight lipped bottom dwellers in hopes they might have become hungry in the last few days. After a bit of a slippery ride to pool 8 it wasn’t until the key was turned to kill the motor that I sighed a breath of relief. Once on the ice and still white knuckled, the StrikeMaster was lit up and put to work drilling a series of holes so the baits could be dropped and the bottom fished anywhere from 8 feet to a dept of 22 feet. Drilling a good number of holes in an area keeps you mobile and in the search mode. Getting a number of holes drilled also gives things a little time to quite down before the hunt begins.

After running around dropping baits below the hard surface it wasn’t long and the LX-5 was tattling on the majority of fish hangin’ tight to the bottom at 17 feet. Now that there were a bunch of bait chaser it was time to start off from were we left off last week A number of different colors, styles and sized baits were dropped hoping to get a positive reaction from these marks of red shown on the MarCum , then it happened, a #6 Fire Tiger Demon Jigging Spoon tipped with a minnow head pulled a mark in a hurry only to return to the bottom. With all the activity tight to the hard pan bellow the zoom was activated on the LX-5 so while presenting the baits at the bottom, they could be kept directly in front of the eyes doing the investigating. Keeping the minnow head just flickering off the spoon right in front of the target was the key to getting a tight lipped orange fin to open his pie hole. It wasn’t long and good friend Dave Kloet’s perch action picked up also, after turning the zoom on while using his LX-3. Using the zoom feature makes target separation as accurate as it gets and it was a must to keep the food right on the noise of these fish to get a bite.

Another thing very helpful was the spring bobber on the St. Croix’s. Sometimes the strike would be aggressive while others it was subtle just moving the spring. At times it was necessary to drop the bait and drum the bottom stirring things up to pull a mark. There was nothing easy about the bite but the rewards were worth the efforts. Keeping on the move was another factor in the equation for putting together a fish fry. Hunkering down to stay out of the rain only made for sore peepers while staring at a jig moving up and down. Hole hopping is where it was at. If there was not a target within the first minute or so it was time to move on. Walking back and forth from hole to hole produced a few fillets every round.

The best bite was from 8am till 11am with the average size at 9 inches with some 10’s and an ocasioanl 11 incher. The best jig on this day again was from Custom Jigs and Spins . The orange fins could still be caught in the noon hours but they become tougher and the keepers became fewer between bites. It was a good feeling to get the perch jarred loose from the noodle, now it will just be something else, darn specks haven’t been all that friendly to me yet this year, might have to go beat them up soon

Good luck fishing people, and have yourselves a Merry Christmas